Locals Call Town as ‘Jurassic Park of the Philippines’ for Marine Fossils that are 165 Million Years Old

In many places around the world, dinosaur bones have been found: dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes, dinosaurs who had once ruled the Earth millions of years ago.

But there had been no dinosaur bones found in the Philippines, yet. Is it possible to find some one day? Well, the possibility is always there but to date, nothing has been found of land dinosaurs; however, marine fossils that date back to the time of dinosaurs have been discovered in the country!

In Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro, several ammonites have been discovered, many of which were said to have come from the time of the dinosaurs, 165 million years ago.

Photo credit: iJuander / YouTube

Back in 1948, scientists discovered the marine fossils while doing research in Mansalay Bay. Several ammonite fossils were found.

Ammonites are now extinct marine creatures that lived at about the same time the dinosaurs ruled the land. What’s rather curious is that despite living in the oceans while the dinosaurs lived on land, the ammonites went extinct at about the same time as the dinosaurs. Somehow, whatever extinction event had happened, the land dinosaurs and the ammonites were interconnected.

Due to the discovery of the ammonites in Mansalay, the place has since been dubbed by the locals as the “Jurassic Park of the Philippines”. While you can’t see land dinosaurs here, you can check out fossils of creatures that once lived at about the same time the dinosaurs did – and that’s the exciting part.

According to Susan Belen, a local rock collector, the discovery of ammonites in the locality meant that the island was once submerged in water millions of years ago. She hopes to find her own ammonite fossil soon…

But we’re all looking forward, really, to someone discovering land dinosaur fossils in the Philippines!